From Foreordination To Awakening: The Rebirth Road Of Black Maids In The Help

Kathryn Stockett is an American white female writer,and the novel The Help is her debut.The novel was no sooner published in 2009 than it was widely concerned and chronically occupying New York Times best-selling list.It is not uncommon for the works that reflect racism on the subject of black people,but this novel focuses on the special group of black maids,and vividly tells the real life of the black maids in the white society,the white families and their own families,using a new perspective to reveal a real American society of the 1960 s,a time when the white dominated the power of discourse.This paper,by close reading in combination with historical facts,discusses the process of the black maids from the belief in fate to awakening and finally the acquisition of rebirth.Meanwhile,the paper affirms the mutual help in the novel among black women as well as black women and a small number of white people.The ideas of opposing hegemony,seeking equality and justice embodied in the text have practical significance for changing the male supremacy and racial superiority existing in today's world.The paper includes five chapters.Chapter One introduces Kathryn Stockett and her novel The Help,analyzes the research at home and abroad,and points out the significance and framework of the paper.Chapter Two focuses on the foreordination of black maids,which starts from the racial discrimination of that special age and then discusses the torment of black maids suffering from hegemony.Chapter Three centers on the awakening of black maids,mainly expounding the performance of the awakening from ideologies and mutual help.Chapter Four comes to the rebirth of the black maid,which is mainly elucidated from the blossoming of mutual help's bud and the changes of black maids' status.The last chapter summarizes the full paper,which sketches out the process of black maids from the belief in fate to the awakening and finally acquiring rebirth.Meanwhile,the last chapter also gives a brief explanation on the limitations of this paper,and tries to explore the future research directions of the novel.